In no particular chronological order
wanted: discussion of the processes by which young men are converted from enslaved/ conscripted soldiers to corpses subject to ceremonial reverence with an eye to the erotic content of the bodies they inhabit. enough already of this fucking sanitized hero worship, "they looked forward to embrace their fate", "they would never grow old like us" band-of-brothers shit. no clinical, mortuary-ghoulish descriptions as in, say, "365 Days", a collection of narratives from a hospital in japan during the vietnam war. focus on their pale [sorry, i have a european-american perspective], knobbly, flat-bellied, taut bodies with fast-flowing sap still in trunk and branch. anyone?
Turns out if you make your own clothes, you dress differently than you would if you didn't.
Is existence a zero-sum game?
see a white man "exercising his open carry rights"/ passively terrorising the community, take off all your clothes and walk near him. beside him. 10 yards behind. out in front. you prolly don't have to worry too much about someone being there to get video. i am sure that will take care of itself. expect to go to jail. -2016
I'm in a part of the world now where old crumpled memories lie scattered like fast food wrappers strewn about. -May 2020, Pismo
new thread: what t-shirts at the monter[r]ey defense language school say: "we learn ___ so you don't have to". I saw 2 iterations of this in like 1999. after all, having the learn a language is mostly about being militarily defeated, right? not.
Somehow it sounds a lot more epic when the Germans call the CDC die amerikanische Seuchenbehörde. Plague-authority.-2021
Site meeting to discuss WTF to do with the bilingual "program", which was me and only me for 4 years. Same discussion as at the end of every year except when I told 'em to take that job and shove it for 3 years. All 3 bilingual teachers showed up. A non-bilingual teacher also showed up. She brought up some issues. -2014
WTC attack suspects in military court. their lawyer, in a full head-and-body covering dress, asks military women to cover up to avoid offending the suspects. is peace possible?
From my limited Marxist education, i was given to understand that capitalism inevitably degenerated to militarism and fascism. I do not recall the part about it becoming a circus.
kindergarten and serious olde age:
fucking terrifying
inevitable
loss of the illusion of control
beginning of a long process with a specific, permanent conclusion
except: money
Oh, an' it's pretty clear to all involved exactly what day school starts, but...
In the 1990's when I did work that helped make actual stuff, we had one bank of radio presets for college and NPR stations and one bank of presets for, arguably, bonehead rock mersh stations. Vile-105, KFOG, K-fox, um, a couple others, not sure if The Bone existed yet, but San Jose's KSJO figured heavily in the mix, being the favourite station of the head press operator, a quintessential bonehead.
Being hip is something i count as an asset. However, at a dinner for 400, given to award, uh, awards to local people who have done great work at a banquet hall in a windowless building near a freeway, being square would be a merciful comfort.
Folks, I don't like haters any more than you do, but the recent demonstrations of stupid, often armed people in places like Huntington Beach, Michigan, etc. appear to have succeeded in causing politicians to bend to their pressure. Thousands will die because of this, but we would do well to learn from the example of these misguided people. Perhaps we should even start taking firearms to demonstrations. It worked for them.-2020
the AP style guide has now rejected "illegal immigrants" b/c of course it is not the immigrants that are illegal, but rather their way of immigrating. the phrase is a grammatical shorthand. unf., the shorthand serves to dehumanise, so it is good that it be rejected. grammatically, though, this calls up a whole litany of other similar forms. environmental president? a president is only truly environmental to his intestinal flora. any other examples?
4th annual "ride all the way home" ride from hayward to berkeley after work. it's never the same ride. often, there is progress in the building-out of the bike trail[s] along the bay. thing is, the governments seem to think they can cut and paste these trails at their whim.-2012
Yeah, it ain't all just readin' detective novels in the waiting room. It's also making sure RNs MDs and my mom are all talkin' the same language. Which they ain't.-2015
I understand many adhere to the religious beliefs of the Catholic Church, but I think all of us think the 5% of priests who have sexually abused children should not be protected by the church's institutions. I think the Church would do well to refuse to accommodate genocide such as occurred during WWII. I also think the Church should not use its sovereignty to conduct secret banking involving the mafia, heroin, arms trading, anticommunism, etc., etc., etc. I would point out that that sovereignty comes from the Lateran Treaty between the Italian state and the Vatican state in 1929. Under Mussolini. That's right-- the fascist. Hitler's ally.
The n-word has long been discussed as something that may be used by African-Americans but not by European-Americans. The word "thug" has now been discussed as something Blacks and Whites use in totally different ways, even as a White substitute for the n-word. So, can we _talk_ about the use of the word "bitch" in popular culture such as rap lyrics?
Jack-
-boot
-knife
-ass
-rabbit
- Mormon
...?
Hob-
-nail
-goblin
-nob
...?
Ooooooold stuff: 1950s: if you wear green to school on Thursday, it meant you were gay. Can’t make this stuff up folks.
my life, described in film:
1. Charlie Brown's Halloween Special
2. Over the Edge [yo, watch this!!]
3. Repo Man [or possibly The River's Edge, and excellent double bill with #2]
4. The Big Lebowski
5. Hmm...
6. Blade Runner-- or possible Brazil [the part of my life that is apparently about to happen]
7. Mad Max? [except i ain't gonna be wearing leather and metal]
Seriously-- bacon 'n' eggs ain't breakfast. It's just a sort of a historical pantomime-- a way of telling ourselves, I'm having breakfast.-2012
My kink: books. Single noun title. Preferably mass noun [e.g. "sand", not "gears"]. Subject of book is substance named in title. Example: "Salt", "Vanilla", "Banana".
I'll pretty much buy any book in a store that matches these criteria. Thing is, see Gatorade post, below.
Purty much every time I go into a book store, one of these books jumps into my arms.
Used to be a stop off at th' ol' liquor store was a thing, esp. while out on deliveries. Gatorade was something I was into.
Then I decided I'd only get Gatorade if there was a new flavor, I mean color.
Then I had to stop bc every dang' time I stopped by, they had a new effing color! It should have made me wonder when they started recycling colors with the word "glacier" or something next to it. Folks, this is waaay past "blue raspberry.
Yeah, tha's when I hadda quit.
Unsettling 5th grader wearing a shirt with a pic of Homer Simpson dressed up as Hunter S. Thompson. Do any of the other staff know who he is? Don' even ask.
1. Circle Jerks, The Farm in SF
2. Dave Lindley, Bridges Auditorium, Claremont Colleges
3. Cramps, stage at pit level, some semi-abandoned club in Glendora. They stopped playing and refused to continue unless people quit bumping into them.
4. Lords of the New Church, Cuckoo's Nest in Costa Mesa
5. *Clash, Us Festival): this was a lie. I was at the “Bullpen” in Chino, someone’s backyard corral, where the owner of Toxic Shock, fronting Moslem Birth, I assume, called the backyard gig “the pus festival”.
6. Beatnigs, downstairs at my house, Barrington Hall
7. Poison Girls, Stonehenge festival, as I came to from sleeping on the grass a ways from the stage, leaned against my pack
8. Linton Kwesi Johnson, Bremen student center, an unassuming glass, linoleum and aluminum building
9. Youth Brigade, some shithole in Germany
10. Nina Hagen, some stripmall bar in Fullerton
"Some people think I'm crazy, but I don't." -my slightly eccentric neighbor. I assume this was Lisa
meeting today to get the kid who has been disrupting my class and verbally assaulting me since day 1 the help he needs. only 1/6 of year remains. perhaps we will save his next teacher some stress and illness. it is possible that i will not be the smartest person in the room, a relief, but pretty clear that i will be the person with the least power in the room.
meeting concluded. lemme rephrase to see if i understood: you want your child to continue with his or her own private aide, more highly skilled than any 10 regular district aides I have ever met, and you need a teacher who has training I don't have. we got a name for that: special ed.
2012
Scientific undertakings related to alcohol at our house include the party to find the best good canned beer before we went down the Green River in Utah, about 7 years ago. Fat Tire Ale came out smelling of roses, but we discovered on the river itself, in the words of wisdom of otherwise perfectly nice people drinking Coors, AKA nazi beer, that It All Tastes The Same On The River.
About 3 years ago, we undertook to determine the best bad canned beer. Pabst and Oly took it in the shorts, but Modelo shone. Thing is, now I _make_ beer, albeit at the kiddie pool level.
Well, anyways, back from our successful backpacking trip, we discovered the sublime nature of bourbon and water on the trail, as well as discovering that we had not brought anywhere near enough bourbon. Research shall therefore commence in establishing the best ultralight method of inebriation-- in short, overproof, powdered drink mix cocktails. Mixologists and flavornauts take note. -2019
Today, I brought Tunisian lablabi, chickpeas and broth over day-old bread pieces with an egg and harissa, to work. One colleague told another while I could hear it, "He brings the best stuff. When I see Piet brought treats, I make sure I go to the staff room to have some." Dang.
Research reveals: bunnies ain't kewt. They ain't wabbits but rather big ol' honkin' [horny] hares. They go "mad" in March, kicking each other in their breeding season. They're great fertility symbols, but fuzzy ans snuggly? Not!
Seen at @ book fair: man toting his newly purchased copy of TAZ-- wearing a tie.
remember: when the bloody romans crucified a dude, they left his corpse on the pole as carrion, just as the royal navy put pirates on gibbets, as a form of terrorism toward others, and as a demonstration of the violation of one of the most basic homo sapiens behaviours, ceremonial burial. no tomb, no cave, no rolling aside of the stone, and no resurrections. unless: aliens. personally, i believe all the mystic visions of the olde and new testaments were down to extraterrestrials.
hey, whaddya think? my friend Poppy felt the need to inquire abt. the contrast between my [lack of] written conventions and my status as a schoolteacher. this raises another issue. do my [occasionally bizarre swings of] various registers of language reflect negatively on my written voice? do you read me and think me sadly stupider than i ought to be? Do you rather wish I should improve my conventional adherence? y'all care one way or another, or y'actually git sompin' out the way[z] i write? 2015
Verbal tricks used by women in US English that infantilise: palatalisation: "Thyat's nyot nyice". Rising tone at the end of the utterance that make everything sound like a question. Another phenomenon at the end of a sentence that lowers the tone to a kind of purr. [Very hot right now: several NPR correspondents use this and I hates it!] [I have womanned about this before.]. There are other tonalities I can detect but not pin down to describe. Yesterday my daughter and I heard Betty Boop sing "That's my weakness now", a fave oldie of mine. As you can imagine, I ain't got much time for Ms. Boop, but it's a catchy song. She sang in the 1920's flapper style of female voice, and Delphina remarked that she could be 8 y.o. or 40. Yay Delphina!
First 3 posts here on my FB feed are in mourning for John Prine, writer of at least one song my family sang in the living room together when i was a kid ( Paradise), 2 i discovered for myself on radio, (Sam Stone and Illegal Smile) and another that makes me think fondly of a former colleague (Spanish Pipedream).
Nigel got a spot in the co-ops at UCSB. He'll be in the vegie house. Yay. Jeremy John.He's not a veg, but is certainly food conscious.
My experience in a student co-op at UCB deepened the alcohol issues I was having at the time. I know people who checked in there and never really checked out, going from nice kid to junkie in the space of one quarter. Still, I regard the co-op as a kind of refuge from much of the BS that is UCSB.
Trendy catch-phrases intended to demean others and empower the speaker that end up making the speaker look like an ass: "Deal with it", "Get over it", "Lose the ______" [big hair, camouflage, designer jeans, etc.]. I am sure there are lots of others.
Discussing a kid in my class with a lot of problems, it came up that he was getting teased on the bus about dancing and seeming too "girly". I hadn't noticed anything like that, but it is true that when we were talking about a superpower you would like to have that he said "shoot rainbows". Nate
hmm... 2 categories of olde friends: people from long ago i hazily remember meeting at the Dead. people from long ago i hazily remember meeting at gun shows. hmm... BTW-- anyone going to the militaria show in Pomona May 12?
April 2017
dear east bay philosophically non-asshole oriented people:
we need a lot more people to show up to these. there was significant resistance today, but it was loose groups of right wingers who held the field, who blocked shattuck without resistance from either antifa or cops, and who created the disorder and economic paralysis of downtown berkeley in the first place by their presence. don't stay home.
hell, river dog farms showd up. they were 50 feet from where m-80's, some kind of star shell firework, and apparently a military-size smoke bomb went off. i bought a token bunch of beets. remember that next time you see their stand at the farmers' market.
Funny how damn' opinionated and argumentative my 21 year olde son acts. Perhaps some of you who knew _me_ in my yout' can enlighten me as to how this may have come about.
shout out to xianity for brainwashing me with the lie that i am essentially bad and may have a chance to be good if i obey their schtick. i have focused on the absurdity of internal "belief" somehow conferring postmortem metaphysical reward and on my hatred of xianity's institutions while missing this mote in my own eye.
Enthused with the Jeremy Scahill arcticle on the efforts of Blackwater's CEO to get into airpower with the help of the Chinese and Bulgarian arms dealers to undertake combat in Africa, I ask 3 of my colleagues if they know what Blackwater is. I bat zero. None has a clue. At a get together of my friends, 6 of 7 of whom only one is a man know right away that we are talking about "military contractors" [their words]. I worry that working with less than brilliant people may negatively affect me.
Visiting UCLA, peoplewatching. Talk of extracurricular activities reminds me of how my independent spirit is sometimes toxic. -2017
perhaps it says something abt. the stage of life i am in when i say i am not sure what would be worse-- for my abode to be without beer or for it to be without yogurt. -2011
from a friend of a friend whom i do not know: Justin R Hamrick "Every time I see Bitcoin it reads as "Pogs" "
Life has all these milestones. Wedding night. First day of kindergarten. Menarche. Escrow. I have some to add: when you first find a thong in your daughter's size in the laundry. When your kid first introduces you to their pot dealer. When you first meet the person other than your kids you think may be the one changing your diapers in your Golden Years. And, least but not last, when your coffin rots and the groundskeepers have to come fill in the ensuing divot. Not all of these have been experienced by me, of course.
Public service announcement: kids will systematically and deliberately break your stuff.
Funeral for a 4 y.o. Incredibly kewt former student constantly squirming in white tux next to me. Sang all the lay-catholic Jesus songs in Spanish. Asked me, "Do you wanna see the boy?". I assured him that, no, I don't wanna go up front and see the boy. Awwww. :(
A modest proposal, based on teaching a student reading skills today: empowering women with regard to their reproductive rights is needed to increase children's literacy.
"I come from regular stock.”— clarence Thomas
Clarence, if you use this phrase, you need to review who you’ve been hanging out with. African Americans were viewed as “stock”. That is an essentially corrupt paradigm.
Age 8: coaster brakes are badass bc you can skid!
Age 12: caliper brakes are so good ypu need 2 of em. Meh.
Age 14: centerpull brakes stay centered. Meh.
Age 18: so when exackly was y’all gonna tell me that THERE’S A TOOL to adjust centerpull brakes?
Age 30: cantilever brakes: SO THIS IS WHAT SEX IS LIKE!! Also: stoppies! Also also: stoppies + 2 mai tais = chin gently laid on pavement while bike arcs gracefully over spine.
Age 40: V-brakes: SO THIS IS REALLY WHAT SEX IS LIKE!
Age 57: disc brakes: SO THIS IS REALLY REALLY WHAT SEX IS LIKE!!
Corporations: yeah, I’ma shift these 143 mil to Bermuda with some smart ass subterfuge to deny funding to the state that enables our operations.
People: my parent died in th’ ol’ country, but those guys are in the stone age, an’ require a passbook and in person withdrawals, an’ i better only bring back 9,900 at a time so i don’ end up like Orange is the New Black.
"Exhausted, we lay our sleeping bags on the desert floor, climbed in and went to sleep under the stars." from the BBC's coverage of French troops in Mali. While the rest of you slog it out in the you're/your wars, the lie/lay conflict simmers quietly in the background. Really, BBC. I expected better.
Speculative fiction authors who have brought bumper stickers to life: Bruce Sterling in "Distraction" has Air Force security personnel selling beignets at a roadblock in order to pay the base's power bill and keep the lights on: "It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber." ©1979. Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Kage Baker, in one of her Company novels, has time travelers severely overshoot their target and arrive in a British Columbia where bears have evolved sufficiently to carry assault rifles, talk, and wear ammunition bandoliers across their chests: "I support the right to arm bears." Any others?
You can’t make something, so you do something; you can’t do something, so you make something.
Hypothesis: modern youth identities around sex/gender (pan, ace, trans, etc.) mirror previous generations’ focus on drugs (junkie, stoner, speed-freak) or musical/cultural bent (b-boy, deadhead, punk).
The stupid racist who [allegedly] murdered a bunch of people in Tulsa, which already had a name in the history of US racial violence, blames a "[hated] [African-American]" for killing his father who was assaulting said person. Why seize on that fact? Why not focus on the fact that his father was killed by a fisherman, and begin killing fishermen? Why not focus on the fact that his father's co-combatant was, say, a grocery-store clerk? Why does this one noun, "[African-American]", achieve salience, and not the others?
middling size street in santa barbara. 3 year old in middle of street. too little for the street. as our camry approaches, he looks and kinda zigs diagonal to the side, but not "out of the street". intrepid partner stops and blocks the road. as she approaches, kid kinda runs away, but she catches him but good, and picks him up w/o him protesting. still no mommy in sight. traffic honks a bit, losing whatever respect we had. [they couldn't see why we stopped, honestly]. i grab the wheel, and park the car to the side. it takes us several tries and a neighbour to find the house with the gaping gate and the trikes in the yard. mom is very taken aback to see a strange woman holding her toddler. i leave. 2012
Surfers are after what I am after: a relationship with Nature. Difference is, I play Safe, and they go bareback.
Note: this applies tangentially to junkies as well.
on trendy language such as "really?", "not so much", "i know, right", etc. it strikes me that the functions these phrases fill are often based on power relationships. we use the phrase to define ourselves as better than others ['really?", "not so much"]. the current trend for "i know, right?" is at least solidarity based, making listener and speaker parallel in their critical view of the situation.
my son, on the eve of kollege, asked me if it was a problem for me to be free of parental control in that i would have had a hard time dealing with bureaucracy, deadlines, etc. i got into a longish telling of my disaffective rejection of some of the control mechanisms meant to assist me [soprry, statute of limitations], my descent into alcoholism, my difficulty with homework and basic math like 'it is now tuesday eve., and it is due weds. a.m., therefore it can only be done right now and i'm hella tired." good luck, young padawan.
The narratives, doctrines, and institutions of, say, Islam, Catholicism, and Party communism mean nothing to me, but I recognize my self interest in their adherents being able to worship in peace. I hope they also recognize their self-interest in my being able to abstain.
I fear they do not.
When parking lots for parks are closed, people from further away will not be able to go. Parks are in rich areas. Poor people are kept out.
The German press uses the word "indigen", referring Germans in the view of the resurgent AfD. The AfD's own Facebook posts use the word "autochthon", a pretty fancy 50 cent word for a bunch of mouth-breathers who describe themselves as only rational. This in the context of a German society which has, in recent years, developed racist epithets for Germans being overly or stereotypically German ("Kartoffel", potato as in potato-eater, or "Alman", "German" in Turkish). Does the idea of indigenous Germans extend to people not in any way identifiable as non-German even if subjected to genealogical investigation whose names are derived from French or Polish? Also, maybe this is not a good time, but there is a Slavic language, Sorbian, spoken in part of eastern Germany ["Mitteldeutschland", central Germany as they call it] for centuries with partial recognition as an official language in Germany. There is something missing from all this. The Jews. This is no accident [Germans, Poles and others killed them.]. Here is something I have come across in reading about Antisemitism in Germany: the assertion that Jews were present in the Rhineland of what is currently Germany in Roman times. Germans, meanwhile, in the same assertion, settled later in that same area after the Romans receded, thus making Jews in Germany more "autochthon" that the Almanlar [-lar: Turkish plural]. Oh, yeah, one more thing. Nazism makes a stupid mystical assertion that Germans are connected to the land/ soil of Germany while Jews, who they hold to be stateless/ rootless "wandering Jews" lack this irrational magical link. I'd like to read more about German settlement of the current Germany.
Fairness: guns, fists: If you don't carry a gun, you won't shoot anyone. Killing a person is a huge burden. Do you _really_ think you can bear it??
For a while it was looking grim. I lived in coastal California right where the Vietnamese Marines would have come ashore.
The great French State has revived the manleigh sport of combat between aeroplanes. Unfortunately, this was achieved when one of their 21st century Rafales-- doubtless a fearsome set of syllables in Francais-- splashed something called a Galeb-- a 1961 design, a trainer used by 3rd world despots to strafe the hapless, a hopelessly badly named aerial goobermobile from, of all places, Jugoslavia. -2011
Again and again, i achieve my goal. If I have no goal, then I am extremely effective at fulfilling non-goal.
Can we all just take a moment to contemplate the horrible state that was austro-hungary, please?
Friday swoops down on the end of the week, taking it away to its lair to devour it. Friday comes as the reliever of the travails of the week. Friday is the great portal into which the exhausted week must pass into the Beyond of sleeping in, dilly-dallying, and cheer. The week must die!
Doctors in the USA find it very effective to treat gun violence as a disease. The German state would do well to treat nazism the same way.
March 2020: It's like watching the 2nd plane hit the tower and leave a perfect cookie cutter outline of itself on the glass and steel in extreme slow motion.
this whole 'marriage is for procreation"/ "should we make marriage about the emotional comfort of the adults" thing is creepy. i got married in a sense of spoof. i am still together with the person i married after 25 years. i don't need the state to help us stay together. i also don't need it to tell me to have/ not to have/ when to have kids. i may also have other issues with the state.
Geek out, linguistic stylee: Swahili: noun classes with prefixes: inanimate "ki-". Plural inanimate "vi-". Arabic for book: kitab. Swahili for books: vitab. If this made you chuckle just a bit, there is a chance you are a linguist by nature.
i think "smart" is plastic. there is such a thing as basic mental horsepower or processing speed [clunky metaphors, to be sure], but you can make yourself "smart"-er. thus, "smart"=well-read, enlightened, experienced, etc.
i understand that education level is tied to the ability to find words that are more compassionate, and that education is just naked cash, but still, if a person repeatedly responds in a non-compassionate way, i owe it to myself to unfriend them. nothing personal, just objective common-sense self-respect.
I'm not _that_ smart. I realise that I'm immature, in a mostly clinical/ pathological sense. But WTF, why I gotta be weird?
Haters don’t have to hate, new study finds.
Education [goal] in elementary school: Find a way to solve the [math] problem. Argue to someone why the answer you found is correct. I won't tell you if your answer is correct, nor award you points if it is. Education in university, as described to my by students: get the correct answer _in the way the prof instructed you to_.
a friend's post has to do with cultural differences across [stark] class lines. one post there brings up our often segregated existences. this reminded me of something: in the fascist 3-steps-from-the-gaschamber screed "the bell curve", the author gladhands his readers as belonging to the 'above average' category of the [reified] intelligence curve. that guy you talk to at parties and think is kinda OK, but dumm? he's a member of the "average" group. the below average group? you never get to talk to 'em. they live in different nghbrhds, go to different parties, have different hobbies, etc. you live parallel, separate[d] lives. Nick Azzia Rikki?
Italians are using their balconies to communicate with their neighborhoods. The USA is largely designed without balconies or neighborhoods.
i response to one of my correspondent's receiving a package addressed to mr. and mrs. jones from someone who ought to know that her name is ms. smith as before marriage, i present these WTF's:
1. wedding rings. what are these?
2. where exactly is it written that the bride's mother is resp. for the wedding?
3. remember, folks, you have to go out of your way to get all your docs written over to janet jones inst. of janet smith. it is in effect an AKA with, arguably, no legal standing.
4. mrs. is, as i teach my 2nd graders, an olde fashioned worde like lady.
5. working up a head of steam here and unsure what #5 was.
"if you're a teacher and you're not complaining, you're probably not trying hard enough." anon. tchr.
"just a completely normal guy". who was homeschooled. who was brought up as a christian fundamentalist. whose family found the outside world to be so threatening to their religious ideas that they kept him away from his peers and the horrible, horrible people who are teachers.
it's sad when you're reading a book by an author-- and presumably a publisher's editing staff-- you want to respect, when you read a phrase like "a slither of a moon", "pidgeon english", or, most recently, "tow the line". the last is from sarah vowell. i may have to give her up. after all, she's the one who starts her book on hawai'i with a note that she will not use what she calls "diacriticals" such as the ' in hawai'i. it's a letter.
My daughter woke me up at 3 am California time to tell me that -crete is a cranmorph, a bit that cannot stand on its own, but be affixed to many words [shotcrete, woodcrete] in the same what that -gate, -athon, or -aholic can be. Or -flage, for that matter. 2021
Forbidden words; chow, eats, grub.
Digs, togs, etc.
things to do to save water: build new cities from the ground up: install an entirely new water system that uses seawater to flush toilets before sending it off to sewage treatment plants. install waterless urinals in all bathrooms. outlaw meat. outlaw wine. convert vineyards to food production. legalise pot as a way for people to get buzzed that does not waste as much water and land as grapes and grain. install household systems to use solar powered pumps to pump greywater to elevated water systems where it is filtered by gravel, sand, and moss before being used to water lawns. outlaw car-washing. outlaw beef. easy.
Funny. Highest expression of existentialism most achieve seems to result from sublimation to the State, in one form or another. Rest of us gotta work an ordinary 9 to 5.
Dear Laos,
I am sorry. I am sorry that the United States sucks. I am sorry that the 2nd Indochina War sucked bigtime. I am sure it would have been better for everyone if the United States had allowed itself to "win". I am sorry that you were a country that arguably did not exist, a country of 2 million where most Laotians were not Laotians, a country where there were no paved roads, no newspaper, no effective state. I am sorry my state fucked your country. I hope you like Richmond CA and Fresno. I don't. But at least there is running water.
Laos, I hope you enjoy the 21st C better than the 20th. But wait-- what do you get up to these days?
Signed,
A very small United Statian
PS Thanks for all the really great smack*. At least until the CIA and everybody else stepped on it. I hope the guns helped. We do love our guns.
PPS The whole landmine thing? Yeah, really small potatoes. You aright with that, aren't you?
*Disclaimer: I have never done white powder drugs. This is a polemic device.
More meditation on the Middle Class at a Mt. Bike race: social status may be declared by whether one's raingear hails from [sorry!!] the backpacking industry, the hunting market, bicycle gear, or, [gasp!!] yachting. Oh-- don't forget military surplus. Mine was from the hunting market via hallucinatory art.
Does anarchy have an ummah?
A day of poor observance of social borders. Told a stranger his pants were "stolen" IDF issue. Turns out his GF is Palestinian. Jokingly offered 50 cents when urban ore charged me a buck for 2 yards of fabric. stopped in at discount fabric to note on their fabric that it is not as H2O proof as it appears to be. Asked Berkeley Bowl to label their burrata as from my hometown instead of "LA". Told the cornerstore dude all about why i needed Schlitz in cans not bottles. Followed up on digging out the storm drain yestederday 2 doors down where water was up to the car doors. and monday we shall be normal again. 2016
a shout out to all those i share a country with who hate what i stand for: thank you for not pursuing civil war at this time. this is a general sentiment, and not an expression based on recent interactions. this is for sacramento skinheads as well as my neighbor who has a plastic cover on her couch-- the whole spectrum of people I have so much not in common with. this is for everybody i drive next to on the 80, and everybody i stand in line with when i need something from a Square supermarket.
Anarchists advise not speaking to State agents such as law enforcement officers under any circumstances.
The State advises its agents that “there is no friendly intelligence agency”.
So, it appears that both parties agree on the noxious nature of the State.
Um... I don't suppose anyone would have a copy of "Serpent's Walk" kicking around. It's a nazi tract. I wanna scan it. It bears on our present situation.— FB post from _2012_
My son chronicles the following scholastic arms race: use game sites at school: sites get blocked. use proxy. proxy sites get blocked. find other proxies: search term 'proxy' gets banned. that was just in middle school. this year, the next steps involves ip addresses and pinging. TY BUSD for teaching my son a basic hacking outlook.
I'm not that good at suspending my ethical system.
Motorcycle mechanic: how can he ride with this crappy loose clutch cable?? But it says right here fix the brakes, so never mind. Bicycle mechanic: the work order says adjust brakes, but OMG is your steering really 5 degrees skewed? We ain't lettin' that slide!
Just back from Fresno. Nearly caused a small riot when I stopped my car. For a grandma. In the center divider. With a baby carriage. This tells me about all i need to know about that burg.
At Pomona High, the three main social groups were Black, White, and "Mexican" [Chicano]. What were the groups at your high school? Soshes, jocks, and nerds? Rockers, rappers, and country fans? Surfers, jocks, and stoners? Did 'parkies', 'hessians', or 'headbangers' figure?
Practicing defenses against knife attacks is scary. I twice bashed about someone I love on the mat doing this today. There is no difference for me in dojo practice between holding the knife and not. I finally had to stop, lay the knife down and step back. Just before this, the voices in my head told me to get off the mat. Knife practice is scary.
The position that each “individual” being is merely a part of universal being goes a long way toward explaining lateral violence, say, homophobia, or suicidalism among genocidalists..
"... Addiction to the Illusion of Control..." I'll think about that in class tomorrow. AIC, AIC...
You go to war with the army you’ve got. You navigate a pandemic with the culture you’ve got.
I kicked _ass_ this week. Teaching misplaced ADHD/ disturbed kids in a class of 30 kids ain't effective, but I done _my_ job good.
Portland bike train visit: 2015
Minor obsessions: duck egg green, Croatian soccer regalia, orange wine, British Racing Green, Finnish Air Force aircraft of the late 30s, British Fleet Air Arm aircraft camouflage of the post WWII era, proper olde Land Rovers, waxed cotton garments, ...
Much of everyday life is just a great grey hash.
Dear normal people,
It appears we may be wired differently, me and you-all. Walking through a campground on a clear night with no moon, I can see more than enough to walk along an asphalt path and enjoy the scenery. I do get a lot of ambient light from campsites 50 to 100 feet away, but it;s OK. I don't find this offensive.
I do find it offensive when you use a flashlight to illuminate me. Especially when you shine it in my eyes. What on earth are you thinking?
Furthermore, while the generator in the camper you have shut yourself into just after sundown is amazingly quiet, perhaps as loud as a blender 100 feet away, I am afraid I have no idea how you can stand to have it running constantly on the outside of said camper while you, what, watch TV in there? It. Would. Drive. Me. Nuts. How can you stand this kind of white noise for more than 10 minutes, let along about an hour as I saw last time I was camping?
Like I said-- I just don't get you-all.
Sincerely,
A weird person, apparently.
Conservative: this virus seems like it has dire effects on some. Better mask up. “Conservative”:this will only affect somebody else’s granny. Masks are oppression!
A problematic kid, new to school. 2 dads. I think it is fair to say that I have little in common with them, judging by externalities like clothing, behaviour, choice of car, places they live or have lived. I'm the kid's time-out room. I talked to one of his dads b/c I was instructing the kid to push kids' hands away if they hit or pushed him. I had him push my hand away as I pushed at him. The first thing the dad said: "You're gay, right?" Well, thanks, podner, I realise that is germane to the topic [of role models], but, no, not really particularly. My colleague thinks maybe it is time for me to butch up.
Re: Dear Whoopi: Rwandans can tell the difference btwn Tutsis and Hutus. One committed attemped genocide against the other in 1994. I have read that Americans, among others, would be hard pressed to distinguish between the 2. They consider the differences to be apparent and salient. But “these are two [Black] groups of people!”
Guiltily, I gave my daughter a book from Crimeth Inc., an Oregon @ outfit. It is just a bit more rad than I, yeah? Anyway, she looked at it a bit and came back with a critique of it not being racially inclusive enough. There's a chapter on gender, but none on race. And all the the pictures are of whyte people. Huh. Berkeley kids.
condors really jump off the page at you. like a paper cut-out or pop-up in a picture book. like a photo glued into a painting. like the cell in the foreground of an olde style cartoon, with washed-out hash in the landscape of a background. like a stencil amid freehand spraypaint.
“If only one (kid) dies (in a school shooting), that is a tragedy. If (hundreds) die, that’s only statistics.”
Paraphrasing Stalin
My friend is hospitalized as delusional rt now. Not only will they find out how real our friendship is. I will,too. -2012: no idea who this refers to
Some damn' teabagger actually took the time to call me a 'dumbass' in a traffic jam 'cause I voted for Obama. Yeah: thanks for the economy, all of you who voted Fascist in '04, '00, '88, '84 and '80.— ca. 2010
Chapter the eleventh: in which Piet discovers that alcohol free IPA is actually really good. Also: bacon salt is vegetarian. Meanwhile, a world away, Claudia learns what noise mongeese make, and finds that one such invasive creature has absconded with her lunch.
What’s the polite term for kapitalism? Oh, yeah, the free market system. Let’s review: a hallmark of the richest state in the richest country is its encampments for the poor, frequently bulldozed, destroying the few things they own which qualify in descriptive terms as garbage. The disenfranchised, housed poor don’t even qualify to be discussed. Let em vape whatever it is they vape and listen to autotuned blather in their clapped out nissans while the poverty industry harrasses them until they find an early grave. We can talk about the Nice People who put our coffee in plastic cups and have no hope of ever affording a house. We can talk about the “old”, whose thinking is flawed because they grew up before Apple Watches even existed, and derive information from face to face contact and stacks of paper. Those folks have got to be cleared out. It is clear that deep experience, integral understanding and layered cognition are all worthless. Old people just drag everybody down, in part by costing more via higher salaries and medical costs. It’s great for the over 50 set that RV life, the open road, and seasonal warehouse work provide opportunities for them.
A reminder: everything i say is a lie.
Looking at the large number of cars along the tracks inOakland that have been stolen, abandoned, stripped, burned, AND crushed, each one, i note that waste is not only a sacred mechanism of the Free Market System, but also one of its forms of recreation, alongside other types of violence.
is it 'nothing is true, everything is permitted', or 'everything is true, nothing is permitted'?
Car: no more than 2 beers, and that with a good waiting period and a lot of water. Motorcycle: nothing. No beers. Nada. Zilch. Some strong, green tea all evening long. Bicycle: 8 beers max. Maaaybe one more. Is that a joint??
Jagged manic for last week and a half. Class riven by interpersonal shit and actual overt racist shit, by one euro/afro girl toward another. offenses include textbook vandalism. equivalent of urinating on pope in my theosphere. how to kick their ASS: read to them from "Don't Laugh at Me" by Steven Seskin-- AND CRY WHILE YOU READ. Fuck wit' me!!!
From a friend, re: their correspondence with me: "I can’t believe I just used Teletubbies to explain Cantonese linguistics." There's some funny folks in this world, and a fair number of em are my friends. Tara
If you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, one of them would eventually write the entire works of Shakespeare. Hey, waitaminnit-- someone did give an infinite number of typewriters to an infinite monkeys!
Industrial farming: “We can feed many more people and/or free people from the plough with massive inputs of fossil fuel mechanization, chemical fertilizers, pesticides (arguably!), monocultures, and dammed waterways!”
Sociert: “Great!”
Vegetarians: “We can feed FOUR TIMES as many people by not feeding the animals you eat!”
Society: “Communist!”
Dear Steve and Steve of Apple computer,
Before you guys get all into the idea of making the computer "the bicycle of the mind", could you perhaps have a look at this guy with plumberbutt sawing the bars back and forth as i pass him? His brakes are disconnected 'cause brakes are scaaaary and after all, who needs 'em? One of his pedals is only the spindle. His QR's are backwards. The shifters are just hanging in the air. Shall i continue? Brooke
Me and my friend went to the store.
My friend and me went to the store.
I say these are right, and grammar teaching says they are wrong. I, as an English speaker, strongly prefer the former.
My friend and I went to the store.
Both parties accept this, though I regard it as excessively high register for most speech.
I and my friend went to the store.
Both parties utterly reject this, though grammar teaching would not have a real' easy time expressing why. If it wrong for the same reason that 'arrow and bow' is wrong. The 2 constitute a set figure of speech, a formula.
Knock-knock. Who's there? Me.
Again, I say this is correct, whereas prescriptive grammar would answer 'I'.
Who's this? It's me.
Same situation.
not all criminals break laws.
An older colleague. Last year, I had lunch at the same time as they did. Their loud voice tended to fill the staff room with complaints and negativity. At times I wore earplugs.
Today, they tell me a student has been using “bad words”. I don't give a fuck about “fuck”, but the b-word is as bad as the n-word in my class. The student “doesn't remember” the words they used. The student is somewhere on the autism spectrum and massively ADHD. I send him with a note to the colleague to write down the words. The note says he is not in trouble, not yet anyway.
The older colleague sends him back with repeated sentences, “I will not use bad words.”
I guess I have nothing to say to this colleague again.
Is this about Arturo Flores? 16-17
i am sad to report that my son does not believe that i never cheated on a test. frankly, i could not have been bothered to care enuf to cheat.— 2013
traveling on bart at night through the 3 transfer stations in the middle of oakland. the trains appear to race. for a long while, we are running at equal speed right next to each other. in the window, there are 3 levels of don't speak to me transit ghosts. there are the people reading the paper in the other train. there are the reflections including me. and there are the somewhat brighter, crisper real for sure people in front of the window.
"Looks Like"
Piet Bess
In the early oughties, I wore to school, tucked into my black slacks, a nice Stewart Formal tartan Pendleton, a regular shirt with one open pocket. It kept me warm. Commentary occurred on the "looks like" level of analysis: I looked like a lumberjack. Back in the 90's I wore a black boonie hat/ floppy hat with some sort of fatigue jacket to the video store, where, to be fair, they knew that my tastes ran a bit raw. I looked like a mercenary. Not that mercenary is a particular full semantic category-- it only signifies getting paid on a commercial basis. My teaching colleague remarked, seeing my downward spiral into plaid pants and flat caps, that | look ever more like a golfer. Others, seeing me walk into the teachers' lounge in a long wool scarf with my reading glasses, remark that I look like a professor.
OK, so the clothes make the man. I find this oppressively facile. Plaid happens. Floppy hats don't get paid, they just shade. Flat hats are the only toothsome headgear not also worn by, say, SWAT teams, a "look like" | certainly don't need. And that scarf-- it's warm as all get out! Can we wear clothing to, like, clothe ourselves???
Should retirement age be lowered in order for people to be freed from odious labor asap, free the labor force of outdated attitudes, ease the burden on employers of more expensive, experienced older workers, and allow people to enjoy their golden years in good health?
Or should it br raised in order to exploit the expertise of older workers, keep people practicing their calling, keep people feeling useful and appreciated, improve the funding base of pension plans, and… uh…
Ten albums that were a big influence on me when I was a teenager.
1. KRTH 101
2. Little bit o' heaven, 94.7, KMET, tweedle-dee!
3. Dr. Demento on KMET on Sunday nights from 6 to 10 or so.
4. KROQ
5. AFN Frankfurt
6. KSPC 88.7 Pomona College [thank you Eric Hill for the tip]
7. KZSC 88.1 UC Santa Cruz
...then I turned 20. KALX, KFJC, and KUSF, followed.
YMISB that his most outspoken positions are _not_ opinions. They're facts.
Hung out w Jimmy Carter last night. Turns out he had quite the talent for inventing cocktails including things not usually viewed as food items, such as newspaper and (presumably nonlubed) condoms. A mind is a terrible thing.
You may think I am not very competitive, but I decided a long time ago to win. I just got a funny idea of winning, that's all. Win = not die alone. Win = grow old with my partner. Other'n that, I ain't got much interest in Games.
cosplay seems to consist of dressing like some persona and then acting them out to a limited degree. my life consists of dressing like one person or another and pointedly acting as an ordinary person. then getting offended when i am mistaken for said persona.
Just learned that a Perfectly Normal Person who i love a lot and who was recently diagnosed as some degree of autistic was, like me, 1st diagnosed by a 6th grade girl, whose name he remembers, as do I. [edit: 6th grade vocabulary in past decades did not extend past “weird” or so.]wonder if clinical diagnosis would make things easier for the rest o’ y’all dealing with me.
Not my own work:
I'm so scared Trump will win. He'll use Homeland Security to crush protest movements, use the FBI to investigate environmentalists and set up fake terror attacks for headlines, give NSA carte blanche to spy on everyone, start a war in Libya, arm ISIS in Syria, militarize the police, and exile dissidents to Russia.
Oh wait...
How we think it works: better stop th’ Monglians or we’ll all have to learn Mongolian.
How it really works: better not invade Mongolia or the needs of refugees from there will cause us all to learn Mongolian.
Thank you, John Belushi BTW.
Lookin for Ukrainian for Russian speakers classes, for a given value of “speaker” = took 2 tears of it 40 years ago and only ever used om Yugoslavia. Remember Yugoslavia?
I'm not going to enter the discussion about how some of us have decided to excise the n-word from all speech, including eliding it to an initial, while others use if as a synonym for "man", except simultaneously reserving it for use as a fighting word. I will, however, note that the global music industry serves as a vehicle for the word to people not culturally positioned to receive the word in any appropriate manner.
A German radio station that uses a horribly clunky PC analog for the English "LatinX" for all nouns referring to people, such as "Klempnerinnen und Klempner", for "plumbers" of both, named, grammatical genders, has a song in rotation that says "Thank you Jesus for my momma, thank you [b-word]s for my money", normalizing sexual in a way parallel to the way the n-word normalizes racial objectification. I think it is fair to say that this is irresponsible.
Grappling with in parenting at the moment: once they were my snugglebunnies. Now they are not. Hopefully, they will be my friends someday. Get it while you can. -2014
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